Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey was born on December 10, 1851 to a poor family who lived in a small town in upper New York state. Keenly interested in simplified spelling, he shortened his first name to Melvil as a young adult, dropped his middle names and, for a short time, even spelled his last name as Dui.

He was just 21 when he developed the Dewey Decimal Classification system we still use to this day. Thanks Melvil! Our libraries wouldn’t look the same without you.